Drawing on Jakarta, Metro Manila and Singapore as case studies, we explore the paradox of slow political action in addressing subsiding land, particularly along high-density urban coastlines with empirical insights from coastal geography, geodesy analysis, geology, and urban planning. In framing land subsidence as a classic ‘wicked’ policy problem, and also as a hybrid geological and anthropogenic phenomenon that is unevenly experienced across urban contexts, the paper uses a three-step analysis. First, satellite-derived InSAR maps are integrated with Sentinel-1A data in order to reveal the socio-temporal variability of subsidence rates which in turn pose challenges in uniformly applying regulatory action. Second, a multi-sectoral mapping of diverse policies and practices spanning urban water supply, groundwater extraction, land use zoning, building codes, tenurial security, and land reclamation reveal the extent to which the broader coastal governance landscape remains fragmented and incongruous, particularly in arresting a multi-dimensional phenomenon such as subsidence. Finally, in reference to distinct coastal identities of each city–the ‘Sinking Capital’ (Jakarta), ‘Fortress Singapore’, and the ‘Disaster Capital’ (Manila) the paper illustrates how land subsidence is portrayed across the three metropolises in markedly similar ways: as a reversible, quasi-natural, and/or a highly individualized problem.
A rich corpus of literature exists on traveling knowledges, their carriers, and connectivities. Yet there is less emphasis on how trajectories of mobility themselves, and the knowledges that circulate coevolve in the process of travel. In this article, we propose “epistemic mobilities” as a conceptual lens with which to empirically trace the transfer and translation of knowledges and practices as they come to be embedded in existing and new social realities. We draw inspiration from technological and policy interventions for living with sea-level change across two cases studies on Jakarta and Manila, and ask how these policies and practices constantly morph when being translated into specific sociopolitical and ecological contexts. We argue that the translocal transforming of adaptation practices and policies, within their contexts of arrival and negotiation, are key to conceptualizing “epistemic mobilities” via local systems and processes of socioinstitutional change.
An individual's "lifeworld" guides perceptions, the attachment of meaning and in sum, the interpretation of reality in everyday life. Yet the lifeworld (Ger. Lebenswelt) has been an undertheorized concept within interdisciplinary marine research. Through a two-stage analysis, we critically engage with the philosophical foundations, heuristic value and the methodological versatility that the interpretivist concept of the lifeworld stands to offer, drawing from contemporary marine scholarship. With two illustrative case studies exploring the lived realities of vastly different waterworlds in rural Uzbekistan and Sri Lanka, we further engage with the strengths and limitations of integrating a lifeworlds analysis into interdisciplinary work on localized perceptions. As a second step, we analyze the efficacy of adopting a phenomenological-lifeworlds approach in order to inductively explore diverse realities of coastal and sea-based peoples, while acknowledging the terrestrially-bound and anthropocentric genesis of the lifeworld as a concept. Therefore, in order to enliven hybrid thematic currents, conceptual debates and methodologies on "marine lifeworlds" on its own terms, we propose two thematic vantage points for interdisciplinary intervention by: (a) critically engaging with cognitive-material meanings and lived interpretations of "saltwater" realities; (b) tracing multiple modes of sociality and being with/in-the-world that go beyond human entanglements. In sum, we argue that while the lifeworlds concept affords spaces through which to study the complexities and ambivalences rife in surface-level perceptions, it promises the means with which to sidestep over-simplistic inferences to the vague and embattled notion of "culture," while widening horizons for reflective and experimental-experiential lines of inquiry.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.